ShapeShift considers Cosmos to be the most solid of these protocols. Near, on the other hand, intends to be developer-friendly while Polkadot’s goals focus on scalability.
Cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift announced a new report with the name: “New Frontiers, which is an In-Depth Analysis of Cosmos, Polkadot, and Near.” The document that appeared on February 10, 2021, analyzes these three blockchains and their focuses on smart contracts. A vast catalog of decentralized applications (or dApps) can run on these protocols.
ShapeShift says in the introduction that they have done everything they can to make a complete and timeless analysis of said protocols. They clarified that something like that is challenging and justified this limitation due to technology’s fast advances. “Three months in cryptocurrencies equals three years in real-world time,” the text adds. The company also considers how relevant it is to keep learning about the nature of these protocols.
Cosmos is the most solid protocol out there, according to ShapeShift
The company started analyzing the Cosmos blockchain. ShapeShift classifies this protocol as the most solid of the three. Also, the report clarifies that ShapeShift “has extensive experience and institutional knowledge around Cosmos Blockchain.” They claim to have contributed to the decentralization of Cosmos through MicroTick, which is a software development package.
According to the report, Cosmos, which aired during the “ICO bubble” of 2017, “has partially fulfilled its vision.” Even so, they emphasize that the team responsible for its development keeps working on every possible improvement. The fundamental idea behind Cosmos is that unmanageable scalability issues appear when using one single blockchain.
These issues may benefit when it comes to security terms but is detrimental to scalability mainly because every node on the network must process every transaction.
What about Polkadot and its scalability?
The text adds in the second section, Polkadot. The report explains that the self-sovereign model that Cosmos applies seems to be compelling. However, this model has worked very well with Ehereum, despite the lack of scalability.
The study highlights how interesting it could be to keep testing such a model while making fundamental changes to scale. ShapeShift clarifies that this is what the blockchains specialized in smart contracts should try to do. Ethereum has taken this approach with Ethereum 2.0; Near Protocol also uses shared security, and this is also part of the Polkadot emerging as a blockchain in the crypto-world.
NEAR Protocol: A minimized and scalable blockchain
ShapeShift also highlighted Near, which entered the market in October 2020. This protocol is an Illia Polosukhin’s and Alexander Skidanov’s creation, two engineers who began in the “crypto space” around 2017 and 2018.
ShapeShift briefly explains that Near’s efforts distinguish itself from another kind of smart contracts by being the most developer-friendly. It resembles Polkadot and Ethereum 2.0 in some features by being a platform that aims to provide a minimized and scalable blockchain through partitioning in a shared security context.
The founders of Near previously developed the partitioned databases for Google and Microsoft, with which they gained great credibility in the tech world. This reputation allowed them to achieve at least $ 21 million in the 2020 launch round.
By Jenson Nuñez
